The best business & finance movies to watch again
The world of business and finance undoubtedly provides the perfect subject matter for filmmakers to create big-screen masterpieces.
From stories about someone bouncing back from oblivion to tales about greedy entrepreneurs, these types of movies have all the necessary ingredients to be a hit. Picking the best films in this genre is no easy task, as resident business consultant Ahmed Bilal reminded us, as “barely a year goes by without at least one new hit thrown into the mix”.
However, we have narrowed down the field to come up with five business and finance movies you simply must watch again.
Wall Street
Widely rated as the definitive movie about greed in financial circles, Wall Street paints a brutal picture of how the industry operated in the 1980s.
Wall Street is effectively a tale that tackles several morality conflicts, with good versus evil the key constructs underpinning the script. Starring Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen, the movie provides an informative insight into the unscrupulous nature of capitalist trading.
Douglas scooped the Best Actor prize at the Academy Awards for his portrayal of Gordon Gecko, whose line ‘greed, for lack of a better word, is good’ encapsulated that era.
Jerry Maguire
Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr are the perfect partners in Jerry Maguire, a 1996 romantic comedy-drama sports film that has something for everyone.
Maguire (Cruise) is a high-flying sports agent who is fired from his company for arguing that their way of operating is a little too impersonal. He starts his own agency representing the only client who believes in his ethos – Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Rod Tidwell (Gooding Jr).
With former co-worker Dorothy (Renee Zellweger) on board as his sole employee, Maguire attempts to work his way back up the sports agency ladder. No spoilers – just watch it!
Trading Places
Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, Denholm Elliott, and Jamie Lee Curtis – with a line-up like that, Trading Places was always likely to be a big hit and so it proved.
The movie tells the story of an upper-class commodities broker (Aykroyd) and a poor street hustler (Murphy) whose lives unexpectedly cross. They are made the subject of an elaborate bet to test how they will perform when their respective life circumstances are swapped.
What follows next is a hilarious look at what happens when social status roles are reversed, ably supported by a script that gives the main stars a platform to shine.
The Wolf of Wall Street
We head back to Wall Street for the next entry on the best business and finance movies to watch list and it is an absolute cracker.
The Wolf of Wall Street is based on real-life events around brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont and the pump-and-dump scheme that caused mayhem in trading circles. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill deliver performances of a lifetime in the lead roles in a film that became Martin Scorsese’s highest-grossing movie.
The movie, which was generally praised by film critics, was nominated for five Academy Awards, four BAFTAs, and two Golden Globes Awards.
The Founder
This biographical drama film about the creation of the McDonald’s fast-food chain has flown under the radar a little since its release in 2016.
It charts the story of Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), who spots an opportunity to make a successful franchise out of a single restaurant. Keaton is excellent as Kroc, while screenwriter Robert Siegel does an excellent job in keeping schmaltzy Hollywood sentiment out of the story.
For anyone hoping to understand why ‘persistence overcomes resistance’ works well for entrepreneurs, The Founder is unquestionably a must-watch movie.
